


Five to go

by deepandlovelydark



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Crack, Crossover, Diners, Gen, Happy Ending, Honest, Humor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 07:40:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13209081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepandlovelydark/pseuds/deepandlovelydark
Summary: So, a few friends wander into a diner after a hard-fought mission. That's mundane enough.Suppose I said it was a time-travelling diner, though?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [geminidaydreamer](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=geminidaydreamer).



> Takes place after "Twice Upon a Time" (and there's a spoiler for that episode). Before "Bullet + Pen".
> 
> Abandoned; didn't have the heart for it after Cage's abrupt disappearance.

“Oh, terrific!” Jack says, slowing the car to a halt in front of a cheery roadside diner. “And so much for your Google-fu, Riley.”

“This doesn’t belong here,” Riley mutters. “I mean it. No reviews, no website, nothing from satellite imagery...”

“Maybe it’s new?” Mac suggests, as they pile out of the car. “Or they’re very privacy-conscious."

“What kind of restaurant doesn’t want anyone to know they exist?” Bozer inquires. “I mean, besides that one that was a front for a meth lab. Or the other one that was running the trafficking ring. Or...never mind, why does something always happen whenever we try to go anywhere?”

“Oh, who cares?” Jack says. “Wonder if they do a decent country-fried steak.”

“More to the point,” Samantha asks, studying the menu. “What are grits, anyway?”

The waitress looks at them, rather startled. “Um. Hi. We’re...closed? Sorry.”

“Lady,” Jack says politely, “You’ve got five hungry troubleshooters here, you can at least do us a couple sandwiches, right? Mine can be whatever, as long as it’s got bacon in it.”

“Pastrami for me,” Bozer says. “Mac, what are you looking at?”

“This,” Mac says, waving around a gadget. “Pretty sweet EMP generator, if I don’t miss my guess. Really doesn’t belong in the booth of a roadside diner.”

The waitress swipes it from him. “That’s mine, thank you very much. And- look, we’re out of everything except peanut butter. So you might as well just go.”

“I love peanut butter,” Mac says. “Got any jelly?” 

“Oh my god,” Samantha says. “You’re Clara. The Clara Oswald, aren’t you? I’m such a fan of yours! With the motorcycle, and the miniskirts-”

“When,” Clara asks, looking dumbfounded. “Since when have I had fans?”

“I used to freelance for UNIT,” Samantha says. “The way you handled Missy, we were gossiping about that for months. How’s the Doctor doing these days?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been avoiding him, apparently it’ll destroy the universe if he remembers me-”

“Yes, I’m still not sure what was going on with that,” a woman says, pulling a cart full of waxed-paper parcels through the door.

Clara frowns at her. “Do I know you?”

“Clara, you know me! Been up and down my whole timeline, hadn’t you?”

“Um...I didn’t actually go past that incarnation of you I last saw, with the eyebrows. So, you’re a girl now. With braces.”

The Doctor nods. “Still right Northern, though. Anyway,” she says, unloading the cart. “I’ve got everyone’s orders here. See, Clara, this is the advantage of keeping your time machine in the shape of a police box. People don’t wander in trying to ask for Yorkshire puddings, or ice creams or anything.”

“I’d love to change it, but Me says it’s stuck that way.”

“You mean, I say it’s stuck that way, right?” Jack suggests.

“Just don’t even ask,” Clara assures him. 

“So. One bacon-bacon-bacon sandwich, one pastrami and swiss, one fried peanut butter and apple jelly- can I ask all of you to please write down your orders here?” the Doctor says, waving a notepad in the air. “Oh, no, this is the future version. See, I need everyone to write it down here, so I can go back in time later and put this one in my previous self’s pocket, so I’ll notice it when I’m changing after the regeneration...”

“That,” Riley says irritably, “made exactly no sense whatsoever.”

“We live in a universe with time travel?” Mac says excitedly. “Yes! Win! How’s it work? Black holes? String theory? Tachyons?“

The Doctor gives him a funny look. “Magic door, actually.”

“It’s okay,” Samantha says comfortingly to Riley. “You’ll get used to it.”

“And I thought that Mac’s mad scientist act was something…”

“Time travel,” Jack says, munching on his sandwich. “Can we use that to go back and watch particularly great football games, or anything?”

“Dude,” Bozer says. “Time travel, and all you can think of to do with it is see old Super Bowls? That’s what television’s for!”

“Hey, I figure it’s like a fairy tale. You try to ask for the moon, you get your butt kicked. You ask for a string of sausages? You get one really great string of sausages.”

“That’s not the worst comparison I’ve ever heard,” the Doctor says. “How about it, Clara? It’s your time machine.”

“We’re not using yours?”

The Doctor shrugs. “I’d like to see how you do it. It’s my first go-around as a woman, Clara. I don’t say this very often, but for once, someone else knows more about how it’s done than I do. Someone being you.”

Clara looks at the six cheerful people crowding her time machine. This is more companions then she ever, but ever, wanted to have.

“One trip then. One.”

“One for each of us,” Samantha stage whispers.

She’s probably more right than not.


	2. Chapter 2

“I had a neat timeship,” Ashildr says to her co-pilot. “It was quiet, with a tidy antechamber, and a reasonable but not unwieldy number of rooms.”

Clara shrugs. “Easiest way I could think of to distract the Doctor. She’s still in that ‘ooh, shiny!’ phase of her regeneration, I don’t think she’s really settled down yet.”

“Okay!” the Doctor says enthusiastically, throwing the controls about wildly. “Hockey rink for Bozer, check, football field for Jack, check-”

“Hang on,” Jack says. “You made sure it’s an American football field, right?”

“Too late now, you’ll have to wait for the next round. A flutterby room for Sam- that’s funny, when have I heard that before?”

Samantha just smirks. 

“I don’t see why any of you want new rooms,” Mac calls, in a slightly muffled voice (he’s ensconced in one of the roundels). “I’m pretty happy with this one. I mean, look at all this tech! Wish I knew what any of it does...”

“I just want one with a bed in it,” Riley says wearily. “This day was long enough already, before we were kidnapped by three space aliens-”

“Two space aliens,” Clara says. 

“One and a half, if we’re being technical,” Ashildr says. “Beds are doable. Up the hall, take a right.”

“What else?” the Doctor asks curiously. “I mean, directions are never that simple in my TARDIS.”

“As I said, I had a neat timeship…”

Riley glances at her enraptured friends, shakes her head. Slips away down the corridor. 

With any luck, she’s going to wake up soon. And get back to a day job that suddenly seems like the height of sanity, compared with what’s going on now…

***********

She does wake up, in her own bed. Feels wonderful. 

Then Riley notices that the bed’s standing in a meadow, and that there are butterflies dotted over the counterpane. The Doctor’s sitting on the roof of a nearby cottage, laying down straw on a half-thatched roof.

“Wonderful thing about regenerations,” she calls down. “One of the wonderful things about regenerations, it feels like you’re learning tactile hobbies for the first time again.”

She looks at Riley with interest, as the latter pole-vaults up onto the roof and tackles her in a headlock.

“Although you do tend to end up with a lot of half-completed projects. I had this scarf, once-”

“Stop babbling!” 

“I,” the Doctor informs her, not making a move to escape, “am a universe-class babbler. Ask anyone. What’s this all about?”

“I don’t know where we are,” Riley growls, “and I don’t know what you’ve done with my teammates, or what kind of heavy-duty hallucinogens you’ve pumped into our systems, but let me tell you, I’m not buying this. So you’re going to be my hostage now, and if I don’t get out of here with all four of them safe and sound, then you’re going to be one very dead hostage.”

“Oh, I haven’t been a hostage in ages! Let me see, I think I have a set of handcuffs in my pockets.”

“Don’t touch them! Keep your hands where I can see them!”

“You really are very frightened, aren’t you? Not that I’m blaming you. Relative dimensions can be very disorientating for the uninitiated.”

Riley grits her teeth. “Just tell me how we get out of here?”

“Ah. Now that one, I honestly don’t know. We added quite a few rooms last night.”

“Try harder than that.”

“Riley?” 

“Jack!” At least one of her team’s around. And ambient. 

“Having a little disagreement up there? I’d offer to help,” Jack says, clambering up to sit besides her. “But you seem to have it under control.”

“I think she does,” the Doctor agrees, gazing up at the sky-painted ceiling with a remarkable lack of concern.

Riley feels rather better. With Mac so utterly in thrall to whatever the heck this place is, and Cage talking like she’d been in on the plot all along, that’d really only left Jack and Bozer. And while Bozer’s been coming along pretty well in his Phoenix training, there’s no question who she’d rather have backing her up right now. 

“So now I’ve caught this one, we can maybe use her as a bargaining chip.”

“The Doctor, please. Not ‘this one’.”

“You think it’s too good to be true,” Jack says. “That stuff like waking up on a time machine doesn’t happen to regular people.”

“Don’t tell me you’re falling for this,” Riley says. “It’s impossible. They’re tricking us, it’s some kind of hoax.”

“We talked a lot about this last night,” Jack says. “While you were asleep- Mac’s been looking at tech so complicated even he doesn’t know what it does. Bozer’s been quizzing Clara and Samantha about all this time travel stuff, aliens and things - if it’s a scam, they’ve thought up a hell of a lot of backstory for it. He says it explains a lot about the Hollywood effects business.”

“And you, Jack? What do you think?”

“Let’s say I’m keeping an open mind. Something they said about the moon landing, well...coulda been nothing. But here’s the thing, Riley. Say it’s real. Say we’re really in a time machine, and we get to go to other planets. Can you think of a better team than us to figure out what’s going on with that?”

He has a point there.

“And if it isn’t, then we’re gonna figure that out too. That’s a promise, Riley. Trust me.”

Implicitly, these days. 

“It really isn’t a hoax,” the Doctor says helpfully. “I’ll be happy to take you to any time period you want to see, if that’s what it takes to prove the point.”

“I thought you’d said you’d had experience at being a hostage?” Riley asks her. “Because you don’t exactly act like one.”

“I wouldn’t want you to think I’d owe a grudge afterwards,” the Doctor assures her. “Getting caught up in a time paradox, I know people don’t tend to like those. I wonder if I do? I’ll have to find out.”

Riley casts a tentative glance at Jack, who nods. Finally releases her hold. The Doctor sits up and rubs her neck. 

“But what was with putting my bed in a meadow?” 

“The TARDIS must have muddled up some of the rooms, when I overloaded the buffer- swimming pools are bad for time ships, don’t ever try to install one yourself,” the Doctor says. She looks somewhat concerned. “I hope that the console room didn’t get mixed up in that….”

***********

“This,” Mac says, looking around the weird combination of Western saloon and steampunk console, “is basically the coolest thing ever.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Ashildr says to Clara. “By all means, take them out time travelling somewhere while I fix this.”

“I gotta agree with Mac here,” Bozer says. “Hey, Riley. All good?”

“I guess,” Riley says. “Yeah.”

She looks at the other members of her team, all safe and sound. Jack’s right; they’re Phoenix’s best. If anybody’s going to make sense of this, it’ll be them.

“So. Who wants to go first?“

“Nineteenth century,” Mac says immediately. “The invention of the paper clip, it’s a historical mystery! And I really want to know who did it.”

Everybody boos.


	3. Chapter 3

“Are we gonna die?” Bozer asks, flailing away as his confinement cuffs. 

“Let’s say no and see where that takes us,” the Doctor says. “No! Not today, thanks ever so.”

“EX-TER-MIN-ATE! EX-TER-MIN-ATE!”

“I don’t really see why they don’t, you know, go ahead and shoot us now,” Bozer whispers, looking at the bumpy cylindrical whatever-these-outer-space-things-are. Pretty awesome monster design, he has to admit. Asymmetrical but tapering, very classy. 

“There’s something I’m supposed to say to them, that either works perfectly or doesn’t work at all. Only I can’t remember just what it is- what’s the sort of thing I’d say to Daleks?”

“I only met you yesterday, I don’t know what it is! Uh- you say ‘Hello, Daleks? I’ve got a time machine? I’m the Doctor?’”

Silence falls. Except for a sort of thump-thump, thump-thump, like the sound of their spaceship’s toxic heart ( _damn, but that is one sweet special effect._ )

“THE DOC-TOR? THE DOC-TOR!” If possible, they seem even more shrieky than before. 

“Uh, that was only an example, guys! The Doctor’s over there.” 

“Check the hearts,” the Doctor chimes in. “Wait, do you have two hearts, Bozer? Because that’ll complicate things.”

Before Bozer has a chance to reply, Jack comes in and starts gunning down everything in sight. Surprisingly, this works. 

“Pretty sure I don’t,” Bozer says weakly. “I think.”

“I like this thing,” Jack says, kissing his weapon. “Mac souped it up for me, he’s decided it’s okay for me to shoot robots. As long as they started shooting first.”

A bunch more Daleks come gliding in, with guns at the ready. 

“Oh, we were having a conversation!” the Doctor says, much put out. “I can’t have conversations with anybody if you’re going to shoot them in the middle of it!”

They shoot Jack, and for a moment Bozer’s stunned speechless ( _how am I gonna tell Mac?_ )- then he sees that they’ve rather cleverly shot the gun instead. Jack yelps, drops the melted chunk of slag. 

He’s still looking at it rather sadly, as the Daleks make him cuff himself to the wall at gunpoint. Laserpoint. Whatever.

“And if I don’t have conversations, then I can’t figure out what their plan is this time. What about it, Daleks?”

“THAT PLAN IS IR-REL-E-VANT. THE NEW PLAN IS FOR YOU TO BE-COME A DAL-EK.”

Four Daleks roll in, guarding a levitating platform with a large empty iteration of their casings on it. Lots of vicious-looking wires inside, drippy green things. And a tricycle that makes it go.

“Ooh,” Bozer says, despite himself. “A tricycle, that makes so much sense!”

The Doctor sucks in a breath. “Metalwork isn’t going to match these braces at all. I’m only saying.”

“These guys hate you so much, they had a backup plan to turn you into a robot just in case you showed up?”

“Hmm...more or less,” the Doctor agrees. “They’re not really robots, you know, more sort of cyborgs that control their travel machines. Remind me to tell Mac and see if that changes his viewpoint about shooting them-”

The Daleks zap her cuffs open; the Doctor ambles over to the platform. 

“You know, I think normally I’d have made a speech about now.”

“YOU WILL EN-TER THE CAS-ING.”

“Something about indomitable spirits, and the immutability of free will.”

“YOU WILL EN-TER THE CAS-ING. THEN WE WILL OR-DER YOU TO EX-TER-MIN-ATE YOUR COM-PAN-IONS.”

“Oh, I suppose you can try. Now whether I pay you the slightest notice, I'd very much doubt!”

Bozer looks at the Doctor, terrified. She seems coherent enough now, but this is the same woman who two hours ago was trying to play the spoons while standing on her head. No way is this a person he wants in charge of a super death-ray. 

“Hey, guys! I was lying. She’s not the Doctor, I’m the Doctor.”

Jack’s mouthing ‘no!’ at him. Bozer keeps on anyway. “So it’s really me you want to put in there, okay?”

The Daleks roll back and wave their eyestalks at him. Sort of tentatively. 

“MAS-CU-LINE FEA-TURES CON-SIS-TENT WITH PRE-VI-OUS IN-CAR-NA-TIONS.” They shoot his cuffs open. ”YOU WILL EN-TER THE CAS-ING.”

“Oh, for- can’t you tell he isn’t even a Time Lord?” the Doctor asks, as Bozer walks over. “I know I have a reputation to get over, but is it really that bad?”

He just smiles at her. “You know, I’ve always wanted to do this?”

Course he has. Getting inside an alien mecha, it’s way more Hollywood than anything he’d get in LA. It even shuts around him with a resonant clang. This is epic.

At least, it’s epic for the first two minutes, while he’s settling down and studying the controls. Ring modulator here, maneuverable telescoping eyestalk here, oh this is great stuff- 

Then a hundred glowing needles all implant themselves in his body at once, and Bozer screams. Screams something he really hadn’t meant to say, going by the auditory feedback circuit- 

“EX-TER-MIN-ATE! EX-TER-MIN-ATE!”

_This is one freaky mecha._

Like the machine’s getting inside his head, making him think the same thoughts as the Daleks. Jack’s right in front of him, his teammate, and all he can think is _damn, there’s a human there, what a great target he’ll make!_

Bozer studies him carefully. Shoots. 

Freed of his restraints, Jack dives onto the platform. Obviously intending to rip the casing open- only he doesn’t get the chance. 

Because the platform suddenly rockets from zero to a hundred (there's a helpful velocity readout) and Bozer starts panic-shooting. Which turns out to be lucky, since he demolishes the wall just before they’d have crashed into it. 

Jack switches tactics, in favour of just hanging on to the casing instead. And while Bozer’s pretty busy shooting Daleks and several inconvenient walls and a room full of inexplicable plastic-bag monsters, he does note that for later. 

Cos their Delta Force tough guy, hugging him for dear life and screaming for help? 

Man, but Mac is gonna love hearing about this. 

**************

“That was a remarkably stupid thing to do,” the Doctor says, once they’re all safely back in the Tardis. (Clara and Riley are bonding, over their surprisingly similar problems with wrangling Ashildr and Mac). "I mean, I'm the one with a few millenia of time travel experience under my belt. Impersonating me can be awfully hazardous to the health."

"You're not wearing a belt....no, okay, I've learned my lesson." So much for chivalry, but taking out all those needles had really hurt.

“Though I suppose it worked out, really. If I’d been inside the casing, I couldn’t have hypercharged the platform’s anti-gravity field. And then we’d have needed to find some other way to escape. Do you still want to shoot things, Bozer?”

“Sort of,” Bozer admits. “This is gonna wear off, right?”

“It ought to,” the Doctor promises. 

It's turned out she’s an actual doctor doctor, to everybody’s mild surprise. She sprays on the last of a collagen applique, which takes away the stinging and even changes colour to match his skin tone; he can’t help speculating about the possibilities of that for screen effects. “I was able to pump the toxins out of your bloodstream, so it’s just a matter of waiting now. Until then, you’ll probably notice some slightly heightened reflexes, mild dislike for staircases, that sort of thing.”

“Aw. I wouldn’t have minded the reflexes thing being permanent.”

“But you would have minded being in a tin can for the rest of your life,” the Doctor says. “Which is what that was leading up.”

“Okay, so no big loss.” Bozer looks over at a still slightly traumatised Jack (Mac’s doing his best to comfort him). “Say. How about a marksmanship contest in the meantime?“

“There is no way,” Jack says, brightening a bit, “that some alien tech craziness could make you a better shooter than me. Riley, maybe. Cage. But totally not you.”

“Oh yeah? Name your terms.”

“Does this TARDIS even have a shooting range?” Samantha asks. 

Clara shakes her head. “I know where we can go for a good one, though. Who here likes the ‘80s?”

There is a collective, unspoken “Um…” in the air. 

“Or maybe the ‘70s. Depending.”

“That sounds better,” Samantha agrees. “Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?” 

“UNIT HQ,” Clara says, pulling a lever. “Here we come!”


	4. Chapter 4

‘70s England. No rain. Better technology than anything the US will have for decades to come. That guy Benton makes a decent cup of coffee. 

So not what Jack Dalton was expecting: but then, had any of them seen this coming?

“Not being official gives us the leeway to be flexible,” he tells Lethbridge-Stewart, as they sit in the summer sunshine and watch the river roll by. (Finally! another soldier who actually knows what he’s doing). “Phoenix does things on the down low, it’s safer that way for everyone.”

“I don’t know that I’d approve of this,” the Brigadier tells him. “The number of times that UNIT’s had to go into action against little bands of fanatics, convinced that they were out to save the world...I certainly hope we don’t ever meet you people in anger, but that is what it sounds like.”

Jack chuckles, but not much; there’s a reason Phoenix doesn’t mess around much on British soil. “Question, though. What’s your casualty rate?”

“Higher than I’d like,” Lethbridge admits. “Always too high.”

“Mine’s been zero, since I joined Phoenix. I’ve got the right team, I have the resources I need to look after them. That’s all that matters to me.”

Lethbridge picks up his swagger stick. Lets it roll down his palm to his fingertips, grabs it sharply. Does it all again. “You’re a fortunate man.”

“I know.”

“I think you’d have enjoyed this place, in its heyday,” Lethbridge says. “No end of strange aliens to fight, and never having to wonder whether I was doing the right thing. My scientific advisor, and a reliable adversary who I could count on for distractions whenever he started becoming bored. Challenges that no one else on the planet had ever imagined...it was something rather special. A period of my life like nothing before or since.”

The silence stretches out a long time, before Jack asks what happened next. 

“I let someone die who shouldn’t have, someone important. There was nothing I could have done to save him. But things were never quite the same after that...Geneva started regularising the alien protocols, and our adversary went and got himself killed. People retired. People moved on. The honeymoon never lasts as long as you hope,” Lethbridge says gently. “Next month, I’m retiring to take up a job teaching maths at a boys’ school. Everyone says it’s a ridiculous fit for my talents, which is the best possible reason for doing it. But you. You and your team are still in the thick of it. Look after them for as long as you can.”

“I will,” Jack promises. And before he quite knows what he’s doing, throws off a salute. Lethbridge smiles and reciprocates. 

An awful caterwauling wail starts up behind them; Jack twists round in his chair for a look. The Doctor’s waving a baton at a brass band. 

“One, two, three, four! One, two, three, four!”

“None of those men have the slightest notion how to play an instrument,” Lethbridge observes. “Although given that it’s the Doctor, I suppose that might not matter much to her. Unpredictable as ever, eh?”

“You don’t even know how to conduct!” somebody roars. 

“That’d be Cage,” Jack says, as she takes the baton and thrusts a tuba at the Doctor. “Newest member of the team. Australian, originally, but a former CIA agent.”

“As it’s a quiet afternoon- as it was a quiet afternoon,” the Brigadier says, wincing as the cacophony starts up again. “Shall we retire for afternoon tea, and you can tell me all about them? The canteen’s soundproofed.”

“Why?” Jack asks, as they make a dignified retreat. “Why would you need a soundproofed canteen?”

“Rather a long story. But it started with the Master’s fiendish ploy to take over BBC radio...”

****************

“But that’s Dalek technology for you, eh?” Harry Sullivan says chattily. “You know, the Doctor and Sarah and I went to Skaro once. Saw the most extraordinary giant clam- well, I say saw. In fact I rather put my foot in it.”

He just keeps on and on and on, like an adorable puppy dog who you'd feel bad about telling off. Winning that shooting contest with alien-enhanced reflexes apparently exerts the sort of fascination on the UNIT doctor that paperclips do for Mac.

Bozer’s starting to wonder whether Jack lost on purpose.


	5. Chapter 5

The year Five Billion, five hundred. Or 5.5/apple/31, in the local jargon. 

There are cat nuns and genetically engineered grass and a time-travel database that can retrieve anyone’s memories throughout literally all of history. It’s heaven on New Earth for a geek like him. 

“But how do I explain to them that I want to leave?” MacGyver asks Clara. 

(Not Ashildr, who’s never really gotten on board with the whole companions idea. Not the Doctor, who has a way of answering his questions up to a point before getting thoroughly distracted. And definitely not anyone from his team, so that left Clara.)

“It depends what you’re leaving for,” Clara tells him. “And- I think you’re taking the exit ramp a little too closely,” she adds, as their car starts to scrape golden sparks across the metal curve. 

“It’s my first time with a flying car. Doin’ my best here.” He steers it upwards, gets them out of the undercity into the open air. The future’s amazing, and it’s right here. "Everything. Stuff I haven't even dreamed up yet, a whole universe worth of it waiting for me."

“That’s more like it.”

“But, I mean, they’ve all been there for me. Cage and Riley and Bozer- and especially Jack,” Mac says, hitting the window control. The sweet scent of applegrass drifts in (they sure love their apples in this time period). “Back on Earth, I’d have died for any one of them- I mean, I still would. But now I’m thinking about breaking up the team, and it’s just...how do I tell them?”

“One of you would have to eventually,” Clara points out. “Everything has its time, everything ends. But it isn’t just like a regular retirement, and Ashildr and I don’t run a regular bus service. If you settle down in this time period, you’ll probably never see them again.”

“I could talk to their Testimony, though. Any time I wanted to. My parents, my granddad, anybody I’ve ever liked or loved or even thought about wanting to know.”

“There’s your acid test, then,” Clara says. “Imagine yourself going to the archive, pulling their version of Jack Dalton. Listening to him talk about how his life went on without you. How all their lives went on, for good or for ill. And knowing that you’ll never be able to change how those events played out. Will you listen to his Testimony and then walk out happy?”

Mac’s brow crests. “No.”

“Well then.”

“Guess you’re right. But are you sure I can’t bring the flying car home?”

*************

“You owe me one bacon explosion,” Clara says to Jack later. “He’s staying.”

“Isn’t it a danger to the cosmos at large, if all it takes to bribe a time traveller is some barbecued pork product?” Jack inquires. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“I’d have given him the same advice regardless,” Clara says, guiding him towards the kitchen. “Whether he could have been happy leaving everybody behind, for good...I asked myself that question a few times. I came to a different conclusion than he did, but your Mac is the soft-hearted type.”

“...wait, so I just bribed you to do what you’d have done anyway?”

“Don’t tell me you needed an excuse to make one of these things.”

“There is that,” Jack admits, as he starts to unwrap bacon slices. “I don’t really understand, though. If you don’t live and you don’t have a pulse, how are you eating anything?”

Clara shrugs. “It’s all immaterial.”

“Is that supposed to be a pun?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And until we know Sam's fate, that's it for this fic; I think her chapter should wrap it up nicely. 
> 
> (Unless someone pipes up with some scenario they really want to see, first.)


End file.
